State of Revolution
Fascismo's evil spell had been broken. Now through the streets and squares of Italy the people surged and strained to shape their destiny. It was a grand, awesome, chaotic hour in the life of a nation of 43,000,000.
War weariness, hatred and hope whipped the people on. Powerful voices lashed at them. Their own republicans and radicals, long dormant or underground, called for peace and liberty. Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill summoned them to yield swiftly lest their land "be seared and scarred and blackened from one end to the other." The Allied armies spoke through General Dwight Eisenhower: "You can have peace immediately and peace under honorable conditions. . . . Your part is to cease immediately any assistance to German military forces." But from the palace at Rome, where Benito Mussolini's onetime partners struggled to hold power, the voices said the war must go on, the people must not rage like lions but be calm like sheep.
Italy was a nation in transition, a nation in a state of revolution. Where would that revolution stop? At the Quirinal in Rome? In a republic? In workers' or peasants' Soviets? Would the Allies intervene to maintain order? Would they be able to intervene in time?
The People. From Milan, Italy's second city, Benito Mussolini had plotted the March on Rome. From Milan now came the fiercest revolutionary impulses.
The Badoglio Government had proclaimed martial law (TIME, Aug. 2), but the Milanese paid no heed. Report and rumor painted their temper as exuberant, mutinous. Into the great Piazza del Duomo they surged, defying the machine guns mounted in the shadow of the famed Cathedral. They hoisted anti-war placards. They stormed the Cellari jail and freed a batch of political prisoners. The soldiers of the Crown refused to fire on them. Once a column of the people, remembering the exiled maestro who would not play Giovinezza, rushed down the arcaded streets to La Scala and before the famed Opera House chanted: "Where is Toscanini? He must inaugurate the new Scala season." Thousands went on strike in the factories of Pirelli (tires), Bianchi (trucks), Breda (tanks) and Marelli (electrical equipment).
Around the offices of Popolo d'Italia, the newspaper child of Benito Mussolini, the Milanese displayed a long-pent hatred. Within the building an armed band of Fascists held out. Led by Vito Mussolini, a nephew of the ex-Duce, they had seized women and children as hostages. They tried to placate the angry crowd by tossing from the top floor a man thought to be Amerigo Dumini, one of the assassins of Giacomo Matteotti, the Socialist who long ago defied clubs and castor oil. Then the carabinieri came. After several days of rifle fire and tear gas, the Fascists surrendered. The crowd cheered wildly.
Their Temper. Milan's temper was the temper of northern Italy, industrial, agricultural, political and cultural heart of the nation. Here, 100 years ago, the principles of the French Revolution found ready soil. Here lived the patriots Giuseppe Mazzini and Count Cavour. From the Genoese coast bold, bearded Giuseppe Garibaldi had sailed with his "Thousand" to liberate Sicily. Here, after World War I, the people had stirred with unrest. Here, Fascismo tackled its first big job, what the Blackshirts called cleaning out the "Red Baronies" along the Po.
Now, in Turin, an arsenal city and the ancestral home of the House of Savoy, the women came out on the streets wearing red turbans. In Bologna Workman Antonio Cazzola went to jail; he had violated the decree against public assembly of more than three persons. In Genoa the military commander warned the citizens against carrying arms.
Much of this manifestation was spontaneous. But the underground political groups, united in an antiwar, anti-German, anti-Fascist program since last March (TIME, May 3), supplied a leaven of organization and leadership. Turin's Stampa boldly published a manifesto signed by a popular front of Actionists, Christian Democrats, Communists, Liberal Reconstructionists and Socialists: "Italians! . . . The tasks which now face us may be difficult. . . . We must unite all our strength. . . . The men responsible for the grave damage inflicted on the nation will be inexorably punished. Let our watchword be 'Liberty!' "
The Palace. In Rome's Quirinal, Chief of State, Premier and Secretary of State Marshal Pietro Badoglio presided over the first meeting of his new 16-man* cabinet. Most of the ministers were not internationally known; in the Duce's day they had been opportunist rather than die-hard Fascists. Now they:
> Dissolved the Fascist Party, but kept the Fascist syndicates (trade unions forbidden to strike) and youth organizations.
> Abolished the hand-picked Chamber of Fasci and Corporations and promised free elections for a substitute legislature four months after the war's end.
> Carried on a purge of high-ranking, extreme Fascists; into the disgrace shared by Mussolini, Roberto Farinacci and Carlo Scorza went Count Galeazzo Ciano, the ex-Duce's sensual, self-seeking son-in-law, who resigned as Ambassador to the Vatican.
> Prohibited political parties for the duration.
> Clamped down a severe censorship after a few days of free press.
> Put railway, postal, telegraph and radio workers under military control.
To the people the Rome radio broadcast: "The hour of military authority has been sounded. ... All Italians must bend their energies to support the government . . . and not hinder it by pointless manifestations."
Its Temper. Italy's anti-Fascist groups wondered if Blackshirt Fascismo had merely given way to Whiteshirt Fascismo. Cried the underground: "Treason . . . betrayal. . . . We are going from one dictatorship to another. . . . The time has come for [the people] ... to demand ... a clear declaration of [the government's] foreign and internal policy." Giornale d'ltalia, no longer edited by Mussolini Mouthpiece Virginio Gayda (rumored a suicide), warned: "[Italy might have as much to fear] from her friends as from her enemies." Milan's Corriere della Sera, mutilated by the censor, voiced a widespread worry: "The limpid truths of the first few hours following the collapse of dictatorship have been succeeded by an atmosphere of perplexity and uncertainty, causing a feeling that the evolution has not reached the last stage."
But the "evolution," seemingly, had reached the stage at which the Quirinal wanted to arrest it. From Bern came this report, based on documentary sources:
"Badoglio's replacement of Mussolini is not an improvisation to meet a suddenly developed crisis; it is the first stage in a long-prepared plan aiming at securing Italy an 'honorable' peace with the United Nations. The Italian participants are the Royal House of Savoy, the Vatican (as mediator), and the 'Peace Party.' The Peace Party consists simply of Italy's traditional ruling classes, and their basic aim is to preserve their power. They had no essential quarrel with Fascism so long as it was successful. But when it became obvious that the Axis was losing the war and the United Nations would fight an Italy led by Mussolini until it was prostrate and thus perhaps make revolution inevitable, these individuals laid plans to oust Mussolini at the propitious moment and offer the Allies a cheaper victory for certain considerations."
The considerations seemed apparent: 1) a peace negotiated with the House of Savoy and the Badoglio Government; 2) economic assistance from the Allies; 3) Allied support in suppressing any revolutionary outbreaks; 4) neutrality for Italy and safe evacuation for the German forces.
The Pressures. But the Allies could not accept the last of these points. The war had reached a stage where Italy could not withdraw, could not be neutral. If she were not on the German side, she had to take the Allied side. For Italy had become a vital breach in Festung Europa, an avenue to, and a rampart of, the inner citadel of Germany. The Anglo-American and the German military machines were squeezing her hard.
For the same military reasons that barred Italian neutrality, the Allies could not contemplate the prospect of Italian "anarchy." "Unconditional surrender" was now qualified by new pronouncements :
> Said Prime Minister Churchill: "It would be a grave mistake . . . for the rescuing powers of Britain and the U.S. so to act as to break down the whole structure and expression of the Italian State. We certainly do not seek to reduce Italian life to a condition of chaos and anarchy, and find ourselves without any authority with whom to deal. . . . [But] we should let the Italians . . . 'stew in their own juice' for a bit and hot up the fire."
> Said President Franklin Roosevelt: He did not care with whom we dealt so long as he was not a member of the Fascist Government and could get the Italian troops to lay down their arms and could prevent anarchy.
> Said General Eisenhower, in a broadcast which must have had Washington's approval, if not London's: "We commend the Italian people and the House of Savoy for ridding themselves of Mussolini." To the Italians he offered "mild and beneficent" occupation, return of war prisoners, restoration of "ancient traditions and liberties."
To many an anti-Fascist Italian and many an Allied citizen, with North Africa in mind, it looked as though a deal with the House of Savoy might be in the making. But one thing was certain by this week: Marshal Badoglio and his faction in the Quirinal were not moving quickly enough.
From North Africa the Allied High Command broadcast: "Italians: [Your] new Government [has] temporized. . . . Had [it] acted speedily, Germany by now would be in full retreat. . . . We cannot tolerate this, and we issue to you this solemn warning: The breathing space has ended. Be prepared. Soon the air offensive will be resumed in earnest."
The Marshal haggled not only for terms but against time. The longer the men at the Quirinal held to war and their German alliance, the more restive the people grew.
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